Remembering the Old Songs:

The Raging Sea, How It Roars

by Lyle Lofgren

(Originally published: Inside Bluegrass, April 1996)

Riding out a storm is high drama, even if you're on dry land. Check
out,
for example, Theodore Roethke's poem Big Wind, about his
father's
greenhouse when it encountered a winter storm. When sailors meet a
storm
at sea, even in these modern times, the poignancy of the mismatch
between
humans and the ocean creates an irresistible subject for plays, movies,
novels, poems, and -- probably most commonly -- songs. From the Edmund
Fitzgerald back through the Titanic through the adventures
of Odysseus, shipwreck is about as dramatic as you can get. My
favorite,
from a poetic viewpoint, is Sir Patrick Spens, a Scottish
ballad
with the laconic closing verse:

Forty miles off Aberdeen
'Tis fifty fathom deep,
And there lies good Sir Patrick Spens
With the Scots lords at his feet.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, that ballad never made it to
America,
so we don't know what it might sound like without a Scots accent, but
another
old shipwreck ballad appears almost everywhere in the U.S. First
collected
in Glasgow in 1765, it's #289 in the Child's collection of English and
Scottish
Ballads, where it's titled The Mermaid, because before the
storm
hits, the sailors see one, and that's a bad omen. Worse yet, she taunts
them:

The mermaid on the rock doth sit
With comb and glass in hand,
"Cheer up, cheer up, bold mariners,
You are not far from land."

The mermaid usually didn't emigrate to America along with the song:
H. M.
Belden, in Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore
Society
(1955) lists twenty-two collected "recent" versions, from the
Maritime Provinces through Wyoming and Texas. Sometimes the sailors spy
a Pretty Fair Maid, but they don't identify her as a mermaid.

This version was sung by Ernest Stoneman and his Blue Ridge Corn
Shuckers,
and released as Victor 78 RPM #21648 (I don't know if it's been
re-released;
it should be on one of the Stoneman or Galax re-issues). The
"landlord"
is a puzzler, even in the old British versions, where they are
landlubbers:
"We poor sailor boys were all up aloft, and the land-lubbers lying
down below." Well, good grief! someone has to reef the sails. But if
you've been in a storm at sea, you know that those land-lubbers down
below
weren't asleep and dreaming.

Ernest was born near Galax, Virginia, and, with his wife Hattie and
several
other Galax singers, recorded about one hundred sides in the 1920s,
most
of them excellent. They moved to Maryland, near Washington DC, in 1931,
where Ernest (later known as "Pop") got a regular job in a naval
gun factory, and they raised thirteen children, forming what might be
the
world's record for the biggest family band. Legend has it that Pop
ensured
that all his children would learn music by putting the guitars,
fiddles,
and banjos under the bed when he left and forbidding the children to
touch
them while he was gone. During the 1940s and 1950s, Pop and Hattie and
the
thirteen children traveled around the Washington area on weekends,
playing
for dances and entertainments for other displaced mountain folk. In the
late 1960s, some of the children formed their own bluegrass band, "The
Stonemans," and brought Pop along on tour with them. At one point in
each set, he'd strum his autoharp and sing some of his old songs, while
the kids would look bored. Some of us in the audience, though, were
waiting
patiently for Pop's turn at the microphone. I guess the younger
generation
can never truly appreciate the older, or the young Stonemans would have
transformed this song into a bluegrass piece. It moves along fast, the
words
are easy to remember, and hymn-like tenor and bass parts on the chorus
are
available for those with an ear for it. And the mermaid, who might
disturb
some fundamentalist Christians, has left the scene before the story
starts.

Complete Lyrics:

"It's nine times around," said the captain of the ship,
"And it's nine times around," said he.
"Nine times around, are we sinking in the deep,
While the landlord lies dreaming down below."

CHORUS:

Oh, the raging sea, how it roars,
And the cold chilly winds, how they blow,
And tonight us poor sailors are sinking in the deep,
While the landlord lies dreaming down below.

First on the deck was the captain of the ship,
And a fine looking fellow was he,
Saying, "I have a wife in Old Mexico,
And tonight she is looking for me."

Next on the deck was the lady of the ship,
And a fine looking lady was she,
Saying, "I have a husband in New Mexico,
And tonight he is looking for me."

Last on the deck was the sassy little cook,
And a sassy little cook was he.
He cared no more for his wife and his child
Than he did for the fish in the sea.

Bibliography

As mentioned above, The Mermaid is #289 in Francis James
Child's
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Child knew only
six
versions, but Bertrand Bronson was able to offer forty-two tunes. Texts
are now known from all parts of the U.S. except the far west, and also
in
England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Maritime provinces of Canada.
Interestingly,
the song seems to have lost most of its popularity with sailors;
William
Main Doerflinger does not even mention it in Songs of the
Sailors
and Lumbermen. The song also seems to be nearly extinct in
British
tradition.

An extended history of the song, with notes on its evolution, can be
found
under item 71 in Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer's Folk Songs of
the
Catskills. See also the entry in Belden listed above.